


The Giraffe Stuffed Animal

by markwatneyandensemble



Category: The X-Files
Genre: dont worry, dont worry this wont be habit for me, either that or be super disappointed, idk what you guys are into, post s11 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 23:25:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14295732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/markwatneyandensemble/pseuds/markwatneyandensemble
Summary: Its actually more about a snow globe, the giraffe is simply a minor character but I already had two separate things on here containing snowglobes so y'all're welcome. That sounds sassy I'm so sorry please read my crap. What do people normally put in the summary box?





	The Giraffe Stuffed Animal

 

“Daddy?” Okay, that last scoop on her ice cream sundae was probably a bad idea.

Mulder sighed. He had almost gotten her to sleep before the creaky door gave him away.   
  
“Yeah, sweetie?”  
  
“Can I have one more story?” she asked, sitting up in bed and staring at him with her big blue eyes. Her bottom lip was stuck out comically far, knowing that unlike Scully, her father wasn’t strong enough to resist it.

Mulder gave a tired sigh, and strode over to the bookshelf. “Which one do you want?” He prayed she’d choose something short.

“Can you tell me a story?” She was still using her puppy face, and it would have taken more willpower than facing Modell to say no to that pout.

Normally, he would have said no. Stories he told took far longer than the books on her shelf. But since she obviously wasn’t about to fall asleep any time soon, and since her mother was likely dozing off down the hall without him, he smiled, and laid down at the foot of her bed.

“Okay, what story you wanna hear tonight?”  
  
“Can you tell that one about the ghosts you and Mommy saw?”  
  
“It’s a little late for a ghost story, sweetie. How about the one I told you about the time your Mommy ate a bug?”  
  
The girl giggled.

“It’s true. Don’t you believe me?”  
  
The girl held back a smile the best she could, and shook her head. “Daddy, I think YOU ate the bug.”  
  
“It does sound like me,” he admitted. “But I swear it was true. We had to visit a circus because of work, and-“  
  
“Not this one,” she interrupted.

“Okay, which one? I got like twenty eight years worth of stories up my sleeve.”  
  
“Twenny Eight?”  
  
“Yeah.” He couldn’t believe it either.

“Thass a long time.”

“I know. So what’ll it be?” he tried to sound upbeat, but was at a huge risk of falling asleep halfway through the story himself.

“Can I hear the story about the snowball?” She was fiddling with one of her braids nervously.

“Snowball?… OH! You mean, snow globe?”

She nodded, not quite meeting his eyes. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked about the broken object that she was never allowed to touch. Her being so young, Scully and he’d agreed not to talk about it’s origins as much as possible, and it resided on the top shelf of the study, just out of the girl’s reach.

Mulder considered his options, but one glance from the girl, and he knew he didn’t have a choice. She’d inherited Scully’s stubbornness, and had far more energy to debate the subject than he did.

“So the snow globe,” he began. The girl sat up eagerly, pulling her stuffed giraffe tighter in excitement. “The snow globe isn’t really that interesting of a story, but it’s owner was very much so.”

“The owner,” she parroted.

“Yeah. He was half alien, half human-“  
  
“DADDY.”  
  
“What?” he asked, just in time to see her roll her eyes. She had less tolerance for his alien crap than her mother. “This one is real. He was really part alien.”  
  
Her mouth remained pursed with skepticism, but she let him continue.

“So, your mommy and I had been looking for him for a really, really long time. “

She smiled, her eyes got impossibly more wide. “Was he green or grey?” she interrupted.

Mulder recalled the crappy motel he’d found the boy in. An old light in the corner and a neon sign across the street had cast green hues over his face. Or maybe it was actually green, god knows how tired and scared the kid was by the time he found him.

“He wasn’t green, not in his natural state.”

“Did he have other… states?” she sounded out the last word.

“Well, most of the time he just looked like a regular person. But he was special.”  
  
“Special? Like I’m special?”

He smiled down at her. “Yes and no. You’re both special, but Wil- the alien boy- was special like how superheroes are special. He could do things with his mind.”  
  
Her eyes got huge. God, there was no getting her to sleep now.

“The alien boy, why were you trying to find him?”

He stared at the ceiling for a moment, thinking about what he should say. Sixteen years of daydreams and nightmares about a son he only spent a few hours with wouldn’t make sense to the kid staring at him curiously.

“Your mom and I… we knew him. A long time ago. And we loved him very much, kind of the way we love you. Like all we want in the world is for you and him to be safe and happy. But we got scared that he wasn’t going to be either of those things, and so we looked for him again.”  
  
There was a weak confusion in her eyes. Her eyelids were beginning to droop, despite how desperately she appeared to want to ask more questions. Her little mouth remained pursed, and so Mulder continued. If she had questions, she’d ask in the morning. By then, he’d have had time to talk to Scully.

She pulled her stuffed giraffe closer to her chest. It was her favorite toy, and the one that most fascinated her. It showed up on their porch one day, no note, no gift wrap, just her name written across the top, and the giraffe resting on a layer of green tissue. She would be much older before she learned that the sender was the same person as the alien-owner of the snow globe.

“Did you find him?” she mumbled through a yawn, as she snuggled deeper under the covers.

“We did. We didn’t get to talk to him for very long, but we found him. And he gave the snow globe to us as a gift.”

She smiled tiredly from under the covers.

“But sweetie, you have to understand that the snow globe is really special to Mommy and me, so it’s going to have to stay up on that top shelf. Okay?”

Her eyes slipped shut, and while she seemed to nod, it could have been her sinking into the pillow. Sure, that’s the thing she falls asleep for.  

Mulder leaned over, and pressed a kiss to her temple. He turned off the light, and slipped from the room, and closed the door quietly behind him.

 

* * *

 

 

Scully wasn’t in the bedroom like he’d thought, and he headed downstairs to find her, cautiously trying to avoid the squeaky steps.

He found her in the study, cradling the snow globe in her hands, deep in thought. She looked up when she saw him.

“Hey. She had a lot of energy tonight, eh?”

Mulder closed his eyes and nodded, about ready to fall asleep on his feet.

“Heard you two talking about the snow globe.”

“Ah.”

He crossed the room and sat on the desk.

“You think he’ll come back?”

Mulder smiled reassuringly and nodded. “You forget, Scully. He’s part me. And if there’s one thing I know about us Mulders is that we can’t survive long without our Scullys.”

“That night. On the pier. I could have been wrong. He could be gone-“  
  
“No. That’s not it.”

“Mulder, we haven’t heard from him since.”  
  
“Where did the giraffe come from then?”  
  
“I don’t know, maybe my brother’s family sent it,” her voice got higher, the way it always did when they argued about something irrational.

“Scully,” he took her hand. “I’ve known you for twenty… something years. In the words of the miracle that had better be sawing logs upstairs, ‘thass a long time’. In that time, how many times have you been wrong? Seriously. How many? You were right about me needing a life.”

She rolled her eyes.   
  
“You were right about taking a break from the car. You were right about Old Smokey being a bad guy.”  
  
“Mulder, I don’t think that one was a debatable thing…”

“You were still right, though. Take the win. Hey- you were right about brussel sprouts.”   
  
“I know you feed them to Daggoo.”

“Well, he seems to like them.”

“Mulder-“  
  
“Scully, my point is- you weren’t wrong about the intuition you have. Our son is still alive. He’s fine. He’s a teenager and he’s moody and he’s probably blowing off steam or something.”  
  
“For three years?”

“It was a lot of steam…” Mulder offered.

She shook her head, and stared up at the ceiling, before turning back to him. “I’m just really worried about him. We can protect him. The Smoking Man is dead, he’s not in danger.”  
  
“I know. You’re his mother, you can absolutely worry. I do, too. But he’ll be fine. Again, he’s a Mulder. He’s indestructible.” He flexed his arm. “See?”

Scully rolled her eyes, and stood to place the broken object back on the shelf.

“And I know he’ll be back soon.”

She stared at him a second, and then nodded, allowing him to be right this time. She then followed him quietly upstairs.

 

 


End file.
